District Courts

District Courts

Jurisdiction

The New Zealand District Courts have originating jurisdiction over all criminal matters.  They deal with all but a small number of serious offences which are dealt with by the High Court.  In its civil jurisdiction the District Courts can hear general claims up to $200,000.

The Family Court and Youth Court are divisions of the District Court. 

These are the annual statistics for the District Court, including the Family Court, Youth Court, and Civil for the 2013/14 financial year. Please refer to the glossary for the definitions of terms used in this commentary.

Closed Courts

On 13 March 2014 the District Courts based at Balclutha and Rangiora were closed ( see note 1 ).

Criminal Jurisdiction

Criminal Procedure Act 2011

On 1 July 2013 the processes for filing and progressing criminal cases through the courts changed due to the implementation of the Criminal Procedure Act 2011 (CPA).  Pre-1 July 2013 cases will continue to be a feature of the District Courts’ workload until those cases reach completion.

As at 30 June 2014, 93% of active criminal cases were progressing under the Criminal Procedure Act 2011.

Total Criminal for District Courts ( see note 2 )
Criminal cases are dealt with in the District Courts and are heard by District Court Judges, Community Magistrates and Justices of the Peace depending upon the seriousness of cases.

As there are two procedural regimes in place, total criminal case statistics comprise cases commenced under the Summary Proceedings Act 1957 (SPA) and cases commenced under the CPA.

Comparing 2012/13 to 2013/14 financial years, this jurisdiction has seen a:

• 10% decrease in new business to 133,034 cases
• 11% decrease in disposals to 136,433 cases
• 7% decrease in active cases to 28,529 cases

The reduction in new business is attributable to Police continuing to make greater use of pre charge warnings, which aims to divert lower end offences away from prosecution and court proceedings.

Jury trials – subset of total criminal

The jury trial jurisdiction deals with the more serious criminal cases.  The District Court jury trial caseload is made up of cases commenced under either the Summary Proceedings Act 1957 (SPA) or the Criminal Procedure Act 2011 (CPA). 

As there are two procedural regimes in place, jury trial case statistics comprise cases committed for trial under the SPA and cases ready for trial (post-case review and following an election of trial by jury) under the CPA.

Comparing 2012/13 to 2013/14 financial years, this jurisdiction has seen:

• a 21% decrease of new cases to 2,370
• an 18% decrease in disposals to 2,751 cases
• a 19% decrease in active cases to 1,918 cases

The number of active cases continues to decrease, due to the ongoing efforts by the Judiciary and court staff in the management of jury trial cases.

Youth Court – subset of total criminal

From 1 July 2013, significant changes to the Youth Court jurisdiction mean all serious charges, except murder and manslaughter, relating to young people, and still including certain charges against children aged 12 and 13 must now be heard and determined in the Youth Court.

2014 has seen Youth Court numbers fall to an historical low. However, because only 25% (as an approximation) of the offences committed by children and young people come before a Judge, the Youth Court increasingly deals with, and can now focus upon, the most serious and persistent youth offending.

Comparing 2012/13 ( see note 3 ) to 2013/14 financial years, this jurisdiction has seen a:

• 4% decrease for new business to 3,915 cases
• 2% decrease in disposals to 3,969
• 11% decrease in active cases to 1,015 

Civil Jurisdiction

The majority of cases in the civil system are undefended, and are resolved without proceeding to hearing and are not included in figures.

Comparing 2012/13 to 2013/14 financial years this jurisdiction has seen a:

• 25% decrease in the number of newly defended cases to 467
• 18% decrease in the disposals of defended cases to 517
• 10% decrease in the number of active cases on hand at the end of each year to 505.

Family Court Jurisdiction

The Family Court makes orders for any person (including the unborn) in need of care and protection. Not only is the age band wide but the variety of cases that come before the Court is considerable.

The number of individual applications to the Family Court are published here as opposed to the number of cases. This is due to the fact that each case may involve several applications.  Therefore, the numbers reported below do not represent either the numbers of litigants or substantive cases before the Family Court and are not representative of how cases are managed.

Applications are grouped under the following Case Types:

• Care of Children Act
• Children, young persons and their families
• Dissolution
• Domestic violence
• Mental health
• Protection of personal and property rights
• Property
• Other

One third of all applications fall within the Care of Children Act case type. These applications relate to care arrangements for children.  

Comparing 2012/13 to 2013/14 financial years this jurisdiction has seen a:

• 1% increase in new applications to 62,614
• 5% decrease in disposals to 60,190
• 6% increase in the number of active applications to 25,872.

Family Justice Implementation Project

In late March 2014 a number of changes to the family law system were implemented.
New applications filed under the Care of Children Act (CoCA) have fallen as expected while the new process is being established.  Longer term trends will continue to be monitored.

Unless an application is urgent or an exception granted parents are now required to attend a parenting information programme and mediation via the Family Dispute Resolution service outside of Court before they may apply to the Court for a parenting order.

Statistics

Footnotes

1) Refer to 2013 commentary for earlier closures

2) The national figures below exclude transfers between court locations and/or processes

3) Due to changes relating to the Criminal Procedure Act 2011 and new systems used to extract the information, data from July 2013 onwards is counted differently from the data up to June 2013. See Glossary